2026 NSDA Nationals yEd Graphs - Civil Liberties

In addition to the files we normally produce, our Briefs and AT Files, Kankee Briefs is has also been releasing the yEd graphs that visually chart connections between key historical events/law, arguments, and philosophers in any given topic. I am using these graphs to assist me in hopefully writing improved topic analyses—it is in effect my stupidly large white board that can be automatically organize using yEd.

If you want to access the yEd graph, click the link here. If the file looks messy when you open it, please press the automatic layout button the on the bottom-right, when is shown in the picture below.

If you encounter any other types of troubles when viewing the file, please look at my guide on how to view yEd Live files linked here.

Below is a more in-depth explanation of what the purpose behind viewing these yEd files might be.

Why Look at Graphs?

Because of the context in how these graphs are created, following along with the graph may be unclear, but I have subdivided the graph into multiple subsections that can be collapsed and/or expanded as needed. Usually 80% of the graph's content is excluded from the final version of the topic analysis as all too often it is logistically too difficult to maintain readability while including anything and everything that ought to be discussed in the topic.

For instance, the topic analysis is not dedicated to be a full throated explanation of every itty bitty nuance of constitutional law. Albeit neither is the yEd file, but the graphs fill-in more bullet point details that might be important to know. Each subcomponent of the First Amendment—whether it be religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition—has a rich history of Supreme Court jurisprudence, especially in regards to how balance First Amendment civil liberties with national security concerns. Given how NSDA Nationals is not an AP Government exam, debating effectively is not contingent on you memorizing the specifics of every relevant Supreme Court case, but this is valuable context both to understand what bad things have happened from a bad balance and why the current balance is what it is today.

Similarly, the topic analysis cannot discuss every would-be argument on a topic given how there is limits on what arguments me and my volunteer staff can flesh out in contention form. That does not mean those arguments are unimportant, but rather that other arguments were prioritized over that particular argument. Civil liberties not mentioned in the Bill of Rights arguably will be somewhat neglected due to debaters generally being unfamiliar with what those rights are.

The most classic example of a negative right not guaranteed in the Bill of Rights is the writ of habeas corpus, which is de facto the most basic constitutional check against martial law and the suspension of whom by Lincoln was one of the most classical examples of limits on civil liberties. However, there's very little space in the topic analysis to discuss the Civil War, and the writ of habeas corpus right ended up being implicitly mentioned in the Islamophobia contention's discussions of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

If a debater ends up running the Islamophobia contention and is not aware of one of the most blatant civil liberty violations in Guantanamo Bay, that is partially my fault for not drafting a better topic analysis. However, it is not the burden of Kankee Briefs to write your cases for you and I have intentionally designed our files to avoid debaters copy pasting entire aff and neg cases without any work being done by an individual debater. Picking and choosing what cards you find valuable for the arguments you desire to present in-round is part of developing as a debater, and I spend significant time explaining the topic more broadly because that is one of the best means of you being able to debate the topic well.

Treat these graphs in a sense similar to more expansive, yet less in-depth topic analysis, which you can make a copy of for your own personal use to fill-in whatever gaps I did not flesh out in the topic. The underlying technology is easily accessible, requires virtually no compute, and doesn't cost a dime. My fledgling graphs are fairly messy, as I have only been using them for a few topics, but the general process of charting the contours of each and every topic you debate is good to ensure both you, and whomever you might coach, understands the topic wholesale, and not merely the sub portion of the topic you happened to write a case about.

Examples from Civil Liberties yEd Graph